The Land of the Dead

I am reading Mary Pope Osborne's Odyssey series with my 10 year old son. He is enjoying the stories and I think it's a great introduction to Greek mythology.

These books are excellent. My second grade class is obsessed with them. Some of them are even writing a play based on The Land of the Dead. They hang on every word, and discuss Odysseus' flaws on the play ground. It's so cool.

I use this book for an ESL English class. It's much more comprehensible than reading the poetic version. The kids seem to enjoy it, where I think they would be lost with the poetic translation in our textbook. All of the students in this class are low level English speakers, so this gives them something interesting to read without a huge comprehension challenge. They find it interesting to read about going to the land of the dead and then coming back. Most are Catholic, so it is alittle difficult for them to understand Hades and Persephone. There is no good comparison to what they already know.